42 THE CHUKOR. 



distinctly the general average superiority in size of the male 

 comes out. 



The great variation in the weights is startling, but the 

 figures are absolutely reliable— at one time of the year the birds 

 are very thin, at another very fat. Moreover, I have given ex- 

 treme weights — out of nearly ioo weighed, only one was 27 ozs., 

 and only one other was over 25 ozs. Full-grown, well-con- 

 ditioned males in the Himalayas weigh generally from 22 to 

 23 ozs., and females about 15 to 17 ozs. 



The irides are brown, yellowish, orange, or even reddish 

 brown ; the margins of the eyelids crimson or coral to brick red ; 

 the eyelids themselves grey ; the bills are crimson to deep 

 coral red, often dusky on culmen, and generally so at base and 

 about the nostrils ; the legs and feet vary from coral pink to 

 deep red ; claws dusky brown. In young birds the bill is brown- 

 ish black, and the legs and feet orange red. Of two nestlings 

 obtained on the 28th and 30th August, at an elevation of over 

 12,000 feet, Dr. Scully remarks : — " Weight, 2*4 ozs. Bill black, 

 grey or yellowish at extreme tip ; irides brown ; legs and 

 feet pale reddish and orange reddish j claws brown. Length, 

 7-0; wing, 3'8 ; bill from gape, 07." 



The PLATE is not satisfactory ; the smaller right hand figure 

 can be matched exactly no doubt by some of the high-level 

 Ladakh specimens, except that the pale chestnut ear-patch 

 (quite as conspicuous in these as in any others) is all but ignored ; 

 but the figure in the foreground, intended to represent the 

 typical Chukor of the lower and middle ranges of the Himalayas, 

 though decidedly good in drawing, is absurd in colouring. Every 

 part of the bird should be browner, especially the wing-coverts ; 

 the occiput and back should be brown tinged with vinaceous 

 red, not the staring brick red of the picture, while the breast 

 should be grey, the upper portion more or less overlaid with 

 sandy brown, and tinged at the sides, and perhaps just below 

 the collar in front, with vinaceous red. 



Here, too, the chestnut ear-patch, contrasting strongly as it 

 does with the crown, is ignored. 



I note that the breadth of the black neck and breast band 

 varies much. In some specimens it is less than is shown in the 

 plate, in many it is greater, and in a few nearly double the width 

 there depicted. 



Besides the Kokonor, C. magna, and the European represen- 

 tative (C. saxatilis) of the Chukor, which have been already no- 

 ticed, there are the Red-legged or French Partridge (C. rufa), 

 of France, Spain and Italy, now quite naturalized in the East- 

 ern counties of England, and which, though very like our bird, 

 may be distinguished at once by its broad collar of black spots 



